UConn Defeats Overmatched Tennessee-Chattanooga, 79-31

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — There are games Geno Auriemma needs to play, games he's asked to play and others he has no intention of ever playing again.

Then there are those he really wants to play. So remember, his team was not at McKenzie Arena on Monday because the bus got lost on the way to Nashville, Memphis or that other city in Tennessee that dips itself in orange.

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Geno Auriemma and Tennessee-Chattanooga coach Jim Foster have respected each other for 40 years, since the days at St. Joseph's (Pa.) in the late 1970s when Auriemma, the assistant, handed Foster, the coach, his clipboard during timeouts.

Auriemma brought his top-ranked Huskies to Chattanooga not because his team would be better for it, but because Foster thought it was a good idea and asked him to. That friendship will last a lot longer than the memories of UConn's 79-31 win before 6,104. Business is business. Friends last a lifetime.

"The defensive effort was extra special," Moriah Jefferson said. "We were really playing at a fast pace, getting up into [their faces]. And in the start, before our offense got moving, it was a defensive game. Everyone was trying to get stops."

Jefferson led the Huskies with 15 points, but she had six turnovers to counter four steals and four assists. Breanna Stewart added 14 points and four blocked shots. And Gabby Williams picked up her third double-double of the season with 14 points, 12 rebounds and four assists.

"I'm going to keep trying to get them," Williams said.

Jasmine Joyner and Keiana Gilbert each had eight points for the Mocs (5-3), who were outrebounded 45-23 and outscored in the paint, 56-10.

"We had a pretty good idea this wasn't going to be a run-up-the floor game and score 100 easy," Auriemma said. "That's not how Jim plays. We knew it was going to be a different game, grind it out one possession at a time. And the first 20 minutes it was exactly that. But in the second half, we just have so much more depth and we wore them down."

The Huskies, who garnered all 32 votes this week to remain No. 1 in The Associated Press Top 25, now head to Chicago to play DePaul, their former Big East partner, on Wednesday at McGrath Arena. Waiting on the other end of this week of reunions is Saturday's showdown with No. 3 Notre Dame at Gampel Pavilion.

The Huskies won their fourth straight – and 41st in a row – with characteristic defensive intensity. They held Chattanooga to a 13-for-53 shooting night, 4-for-20 from three-point range. They forced 20 turnovers and held it to just eight points in the second half.

The Kodak moment: The Mocs' Queen Alford opened the third quarter with a three-pointer that cut UConn's lead to 37-26. Chattanooga scored only one more time in the quarter, with 2:58 remaining. UConn outscored it, 23-2 down the stretch, to take a 32-point lead.

"It was also a point of taking time to find our offense," Williams said. "Usually we run our offense first and the defense follows."

The Mocs did have street cred; a two-point loss at Tennessee on Nov. 23 and the top shot blocker in Joyner, who was coming off a 31-point night Saturday against UT-Martin. And three minutes into the game, they led 6-4.

The fans were into it. The students turned out with their drum lines and body paint and created the type of atmosphere UConn doesn't often see. They yelled and shook their fists in hopes of getting the Huskies off their game.

At one point in the first half, a fan sitting across the floor from the UConn bench even yelled, "Sit down, Geno," something he might have heard back in the days in Knoxville or Piscataway, N.J. Geno turned and faced the fan and smiled. He had a lot to smile about.

At first, the Huskies were feeding the ball inside to Stewart to take advantage of a defensive mismatch and it was working. But as the half went on, Stewart's scoring gave way to a more balanced effort, one led by Jefferson, who scored 13 points in 17 first-half minutes.

With the score 10-8, Stewart scored her last point of the half on a free throw. That got the Huskies on a 9-3 roll at the end of the first that produced a 19-11 lead.

It also seemed to ignite the Huskies' defense. They fought every possession, switching flawless around the perimeter, hands up at one point, filling the passing lanes the next. With 2:45 to play in the first half, the lead was 20 (35-15).

The Mocs got the margin down to 37-23 at the half with the help of two late three-pointers. But everything they did offensively seemed hard.